Download Plasticity and Resilience

Breeana Coons
Psychology 1100-012
Summer 2012
Plasticity and Resilience
It has been said the human brain is shows plasticity & resiliency over the lifespan.
Plasticity refers to two complementary aspects of development providing “hope and realism –
hope because change is possible, and realism because development build on what came before”
(Berger, 15). Meaning the brain is adaptable and has the ability to stretch, bend and “specialize
itself in response to challenges” (Nelson, par. 1). Resilience is being able to adapt and overcome
stress “despite significant adversity” (Berger, 276). To say that the human brain has these two
traits means that it has the ability to adapt and specialize to challenges and overcome them
surprisingly well over our life. As we grow older life poses new challenges and what we need to
accomplish changes, ranging from going to school, being a parent, getting a promotion, and
dealing with tragedy and so on, all in our life span. With all of this our brain is able to adapt
through plasticity to change how we process this different information and learn in new
situations; with resilience we are able to work through the hard times to get to a better place.
Without plasticity would not be able to adapt so well to our constantly changing situations and
environment. It helps us go from a full time employee at Costco to a stay at home mom to
president of the PTA to learn to read music and play the guitar and so much more. We are able to
adapt and change our view and our process fairly easily.
Resiliency is an adaptive characteristic for humans to possess. Without resilience we
would not be able to come back out on the other side after a trauma, a disaster, or loss. Resilience
is not one size fits all concept. It is different for every person because every person is different
and goes through different situations, stress, and trauma, therefore reacts in different ways and
needs different things to cope. Even with the same individual their resilience in different
circumstances is going to change, going to adapt and going to helps a shield from going through
something like it again. In the article “A Question of Resilience” by Emily Bazelon it is
suggested that resilience depends on circumstance, duration of the situation/trauma, support and
also genes are a factor. The 5-HTT gene is one factor that helps to determine an individual’s
resilience, or ability to come back from an adverse situation. The 5-HTT gene has two alleles,
which can be long or short. The length of these alleles is what is significant in the question of
resilience. “People with at least one short 5-HTT allele are more prone to depression…Two long
alleles, on the other hand, gave their carriers a good chance of bouncing back under negative
circumstances.” (Bazelon 2-3). The gene has no effect without adverse circumstances, but when
these are present the length of these alleles can be a factor in how well an individual can bounce
back.
In the article there was an example of how this can affect ones response to adversity.
Three sisters were sexually abused by their mother’s boyfriend for a varying amount of time and
eventually taken from their mother to foster care, and then to live with their grandmother. The
oldest sister has had the most trouble working through this trauma, and still deals with its affects
every day; she has one short and one long allele for 5-HTT. The middle sister and the youngest
are faring quite well and do not have a lot of the problems their oldest sister has; they both have
two long alleles for the 5-HTT. The oldest sister was put through the sexual abuse for the longest
amount of time but had the same support her younger sisters had, she was comforted to find out
that there was another reason for her life being hard. They discussed other evidence such as a
paper that “ reported on 196 children between the ages of 5 and 15, 109 of them removed from
their homes in Connecticut because of reports of physical or sexual abuse or neglect. This group
was compared with a second nonabused group with the same racial composition.. abused
children with two short 5-HTT alleles had a higher mean score for depression than the abused
children with two long alleles and the nonabused children, no matter what their alleles.”
(Bazelon 4-5). They do point out that this gene difference is only a factor that can tip the scale
one way or the other, but is not a diagnosis or a determining factor of happiness. There are many
more factors that can have a greater effect on an individual’s resilience.
Plasticity can also explain individual differences in resiliency. Being able to adapt, bend
and stretch in new situation can have a big effect on how you respond in an adverse situation. If
you can adapt and change your way of thinking in adverse circumstances it will be easier to deal
with and process the trauma in order to get through it. However, if an individual’s “plasticity”
was low and they were not able to adapt to new situations and environments a trauma or adverse
situation might overwhelm them causing them to shut down and be unable to process it, and rise
above it.
This research has shown me how many things can affect my development and my
response to situations. It comforting to know that sometimes it isn’t my fault I can’t learn a new
concept quickly or bounce back from a situation. But, genes and plasticity aren’t a set
determining factor either. I can see that is like a puzzle if they all line up it can determine how I
develop. It is similar with a lot of genes like the gene for schizophrenia, if you have it and certain
environmental and other factors trigger it, it is like the puzzle lining up. But, just because you
have a gene for something, or a vulnerable gene isn’t a death sentence, so to speak; there are so
many factors to how we learn or adapt with and in certain situation together they can determine
how. It is comforting to know that people who have all the odds stacked against them, can have a
gene like 5-HTT with two long alleles that enables them to push through even if they don’t have
support of a family. It’s amazing how there are certain things in our brain that have no effect
until they are triggered by a situation or environment and then they begin to help or hinder.
Works Cited
(n.d.).
Bazelon, E. (2006, April 30). A Question of Resilience. The New York Times, pp. 1-8.
Berger, K. S. (2010). Inivation to the Life Span. New York: Worth Publishers .
Nelson, L. (2006). A learning machine: Plasticity and change throughout life. APS Observer (pp
27-28).